So upset by elopement

[Jaffacakedigestive]

I found out today my DSis eloped at the weekend & married the father of her children. I'm so so upset. Not by her wedding, people can have whatever wedding they choose, but by the fact she never told anyone? My poor mum does so much for her & we all speak daily. I thought we were close but obviously not and I feel like all the trust has gone.
AIBU to be hurt?

Absolutely this.

I think you are presuming we are in the UK.

Oh dear, dear me no.

If you insist that other people must weigh every impact on you and include you before making major personal decisions, you are creating an absolute mess of entangled entitlement for yourself and everyone else.

You and your sister are both entitled to your feelings, but having feelings does not give you veto power over someone else's life.

You are not owed a casting vote, a consultation, or any input on choices someone makes strictly for themselves, just as no one gets to dictate your job, your partner, or your friends. Personal decisions are not run by committee, no matter how close people may be.

Deciding another person’s wedding choice is yours to feel offended by confuses a choice made for themselves with a deliberate slight directed at you. You weren't being attacked by her choice not to tell any of you. You can want whatever you like, but that is not equivalent to another person's right to have auotonomy over their important decisions.

You cannot be deprived of an event you do not own. A wedding is a private choice, not an obligation owed to you or anyone else.

They did not do something TO or AGAINST you, they did something for themselves. It's not an active attack or insult to simply do what they want without kowtowing to what you or others might want. You're simply not part of the decision making, how you choose to feel about that is up to you.

I can see why the kept their choice private. They pre empted your (and other family members) main character syndrome rather effectively by doing so.

The whole point of eloping is not telling people and not having some distant aunt or uncle kicking up a fuss that they haven’t been invited.

Not telling ANYONE is about not asking anyone in the family to keep a secret. If she told you in advance, you’d have posted “my sister’s eloping and I’m not invited AND she doesn’t want me to tell anyone”.

Me and my DH had a tiny wedding, gave people a couple of months notice and in those 2 months we had nothing but hassle from family members we didn’t invite, despite saying it’s just for immediate family.

What is it you're not understanding, @Jaffacakedigestive? Your sister chose not to tell you, despite you being close, because she didn't want her wedding cluttered up with you making it all about you, the 'lack of trust', wailing about 'having the decency' to tell your mother etc. She didn't trust you not to make it all about you. Ask yourself why that might have been.

And ask yourself why you seem to think that 'trust' involves the obligation of full disclosure. Because you saw her crowning, your sister doesn't get to choose to keep some aspects of her life to herself? She 'owes' you total transparency?

I think you’re being unreasonable. From the title of the thread I assumed your 17 year old daughter had eloped with the local junkie. Not your adult sister married her long time partner who she has a couple of kids with.

My brother did this last year. Sent photos the next day saying ‘look what we did!’ And sent the photos.

I couldn’t get too wound up. They wanted a quiet do and got one. What difference does it make that you didn’t know??

I think your reaction says exactly why she didn’t tell you. She wanted no fuss wedding with her husband and kids without any pressure for additional guests and guilt tripping and she clearly didn’t trust you not to do that.

@Jaffacakedigestive
OP I did exactly the same as your sister.
We'd been together as a couple for years. Then we decided we wanted to be married. We were in love and being together as a couple was enough for us but once we decided to start a family and had a mortgage we wanted to get married. Of course for love, but also for legal and financial security reasons, since the law doesn't protect unmarried couples. I didn't want a wedding. I didn't want a big celebration or a party. I couldn't bear the thought of so much attention on me for the day. I didn't want to get all dressed up with a beautiful dress, hair, make up; I know this is wonderful for some women but for me it's my worst nightmare. I literally did not want any fuss at all. I simply wanted to be legally married, quietly.
So we eloped. We married. We had such a lovely day together, we walked hand in hand along the beach together at sunset after the marriage, had a lovely meal together outside looking over a magnificent view, followed by a lovely holiday. We didn't tell anyone before we left because we knew full well we'd be questioned and challenged about our decision by some family and friends which would have completely spoiled things for us.
So we kept it to ourselves and told everyone when we got back. We were glowing with happiness when we returned, in our bubble of love, having married exactly in the way we'd wanted to. Surprisingly - and I hadn't expected to feel this way - I felt good inside to marry in exactly the way I'd wanted to instead of bowing to pressure from others' expectations.
I will tell you a cautionary piece of advice; when we returned and told everyone, the people who were overjoyed for us and threw their arms around us with a huge smile and went on to deliver us a congratulations card and thoughtful gift, and the people who made it clear to us that they weren't happy with what we'd done because it upset, hurt or offended them, either through them telling us directly or by using an 'off' attitude towards us about it, made us see very clear distinctions between those that genuinely cared for our happiness and nothing else, and those that showed us they didn't. We developed a shift in how we felt towards the latter, and that has stayed with us 15 years later.
So if you value your closeness to your sister, be careful with your response to her wonderful news.

Why would I guilt trip her into having guests? It wasn't my wedding. Being privately hurt that she didn't share that she was planning to get married does not equate to expecting any kind of say on the wedding she chose.

Well, that's probably your answer. It's about his side of the family. Maybe they felt as a couple that it would be even worse if one side of the family were there treating it like it was a major life event.

I couldn't even tell you what the date of our civil partnership was. I've told people on a need to know basis but even I quite often forget and I still refer to DP as "my boyfriend". People who are close to me wouldn't get any closer by pretending it was some wonderful life event I was excited about - that's just not me. So being close to me is understanding how much I had an aversion to having a wedding-type celebration, and how I felt making it public would necessarily change the character of our relationship which wasn't broken and didn't need fixing. Treating it like renewing a parking permit and going on with our day was actually more fitting for us.

Time for you mum to stop doing anything for her. Massive disrespect.

It's honestly even weirder if you're genuinely so laissez-faire that you'd have been happy not to be invited, wouldn't have had any opinions on what she should and shouldn't do etc. Like... this isn't even about her getting married, it's about you feeling entitled to know all her life plans in advance. Would you expect her to tell you if she's planning to go for a job interview? Try for another child? Redecorate her living room? Take up breakdancing?

It's OK to just do things quietly without announcing them in advance to anyone.

I can understand you feeling a bit upset that you weren’t there but I have to admit, I’m struggling to see why you’re so bothered that she told you immediately afterwards rather than beforehand. It makes absolutely no difference. I think when a couple is well established with children and other commitments already, it seems very understandable for them to just go off and get married and it can feel, for them, less of a big deal, as they were already ‘married’ in all but the legal sense, iyswim. A friend of mine did this recently, I was so surprised as I’d only seen her on the Wednesday and they married on the Friday, but to them, it was just about the legalities of it all, and they didn’t see the need for a big drama.

Agree. It’s fine it’s her choice of day, but to not even mention something like this?

Looks like she made a good decision. What a fuss.

Absolutely this, though we got married rather than had a CP, because it wasn't available for straight people at the time (if it had been, we'd have done that for sure.) And yes exactly to the potential for other people to decide they knew better, and that it was some kind of wonderful celebration of a major life event, rather than the simple, plainclothes legal procedure it was for DH and me.

Don't get me wrong, my relationship is very important, and very happy, but legalising it after many years was not.

I would understand if it were an attempt to pin down the Duke of Croydon, who refused the misalliance, but even then she should have said 'mum, am planning to entrap the Duke of Croydon, so we are running away, pretend I did not tell you'. My male mate pinned down a rich bride like that in Vegas 20 years ago. I don't even know if that marriage is legal in the UK, but still.

The OP has made it clear that her mum isn’t bothered and has spent years saying that they should just elope.

I know how you feel OP - one of my brothers did this and I found out via a school gate mum whose daughter was friends with my with niece. I would suggest that most people who are saying YABU have never actually experienced this. It made me realise that my brother only ever involved us if it benefited him (endless childcare, meals out, money etc). I couldn’t care less about the fact we didn’t attend the wedding, but the secrecy was so odd and unnecessary. It made me realise he didn’t think about me in the way I thought about him. Our relationship has never been the same since.

This !

A wedding and a marriage is about the two people committing to each other. They already have children so this isn't a secret relationship. Their wedding, their choice. There could be any number of reasons for wanting it to be just them.

There's nothing stopping you and your mum hosting a celebratory meal out or family party for them but there's also a chance that your sister and her husband just didn't want the fuss or the expense.

You and your mum mustn't make this about you. It's ok to be disappointed but don't sour their marriage by making a huge deal about it.

My first wedding was a big do, huge party with dinner and dancing. It was a lot of fun

My second wedding was just me and my wife, didn't invite our adult kids, our siblings, no friends, just our dog-walkers as witnesses. It was a really personal, intense commitment for the two of us. It wasn't because we didn't love our families, it was because it was a moment for the two of us. We had a lunch for our families and friends later that was joyful

Please try and be happy for her. It doesn't necessarily diminish your relationship or say anything at all about it

I can see both sides. Me and my husband desperately wanted to do this and had planned it just this way but when we told family, my side of the family kicked off so much that we had to bend to some of their wishes. We ended up with a nice wedding but certainly not entirely what we wanted at all. Maybe this is why people elope.

On the other hand, my husband's brother did this, they eloped and rang people after, I mean it did feel hurtful because us of all people would have totally respected and understood what they wanted to do, but maybe they felt that if they told us they would have to tell others and someone would have had something to say. Either way, you have no choice to accept and move on. Maybe you could ask her why she felt she didn't want to tell you and share how it's made you feel - I think that's a totally valid thing to do. I think I would feel hurt too though.

We did this, only our parents attended. I was quite annoyed that one of husband's siblings made it all about them and were quite unpleasant to my in laws for a while after.
We are both private and introverted and I'm also quite anxious and would rather eat my own hair than make vows and sign important legal documents (which is what the marriage ceremony is actually for) in front of loads of people, and it would have been loads of people as we found that if you are inviting one cousin, then you have to invite that old family friend and before you know it, it all gets out of hand with sixty people on the list 😬
We didn't tell others in advance because we knew we would get some people 'just happening to be passing by' which then makes things really unfair and awkward for others not there or if we told them in advance but didn't tell them where the location it'd be all: 'I can't believe you're not inviting meeeee!'

But you've already said your mum isn't bothered so why does it matter that she didn't know?